Portrait of Martha Ray by Nathaniel Dance (Public Domain)

Those of you who have read my mysteries know by now that my novels are often inspired by true-life murders. It’s probably the journalist in me that looks to real life to inform my writing. 

In this case, inspiration for Murder at the Opera came from the 1779 murder of Martha Ray, a British singer who was the longtime mistress of the 4th Earl of Sandwich. (The earl is most famous for supposedly having invented the sandwich.)

Ray was an accomplished singer but Sandwich did not allow her to sing in public. She only performed for his friends at private parties.

It was at one of these gatherings that Martha probably met James Hackman, a soldier 10 years her junior, who became infatuated with her. We don’t know if the two were romantically involved or whether Hackman was a stalker. 

One night, as Martha was leaving the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden with a lady friend, Hackman suddenly appeared. By this time, he had left the army and was now a clergyman. Hackman shot Martha in the head, killing her instantly.

Sandwich, who lived with Martha for sixteen years and had several children with her, was supposedly distraught. The murder was a sensation and the public followed the case closely.

Some of the more misogynistic narratives suggested that Hackman was a man in love who’d been cruelly rejected and that Martha had paid the price for a life of sin. It was a case of “blame the victim” while portraying her killer in a positive light. 

I think it is the journalist in me that is often inspired to turn true-life events into fiction.

Accused murderess Madeleine Smith (Public Domain Photo)

My first Atlas Catesby mystery, Murder in Mayfair, was inspired by a real incident that took place back in the 1700s, when a duke purchased the wife of an ostler who was selling the woman to the highest bidder. 

My second Atlas Catesby novel, Murder in Bloomsbury, borrows liberally from a sensational murder trial that occurred in Scotland in the mid 1800s.

Glasgow socialite Madeleine Smith was accused of killing her low-born lover. The case had all of the elements of a high drama—blackmail, sex, poison and possibly murder. 

Letters detailing the passionate secret love affair were introduced in court and scandalized society at the time. I was fascinated to be able to read the transcript from the trial online. You’ll see elements of Madeleine Smith’s story throughout Murder in Bloomsbury. 

I hope you enjoy reading the second Atlas Catesby mystery as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it!

Anne Wells, the Duchess of Chandos, by Joseph Highmore. (c) Walker Art Gallery; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

Murder in Mayfair begins when amateur sleuth Atlas Catesby comes across a man selling his wife in an Inn Yard. The incident is based on a true story that I found so fascinating, I knew I had to borrow the idea for a book.

In the real story, the buyer was Henry Bridges, the Duke of Chandos, who was on his way to London when he stopped for a bite at the Pelican Inn in Newbury. A stir in the yard drew the duke’s attention. When he learned a man was about to sell his wife, His Grace reportedly replied, “We will go and see the sale.”

Anne’s husband, a drunken inn ostler, had a halter around his wife’s neck. The duke, impressed with Anne’s beauty and patience, decided to buy her himself.

Another version of the story is that Henry saw the ostler beat his wife and, feeling sorry for her, offered the husband a sum of money for her. The story gets a little murky here. One version suggests Henry, a widower, made Anne his mistress. Another is that his first wife had not yet died and that he placed Anne in the care of a vicar’s family.

During that time, it is said, Henry had her ‘educated into a charming person.’

A few years later, in 1744, Anne’s husband finally drank himself to death. Henry’s first wife had died several years earlier in 1738.

The same year her husband died, Anne married the duke on Christmas Day at Mr. Keith’s Chapel in Mayfair.

Impressions about what kind of person Anne, Duchess of Chandos, was are mixed.

Less than a month after her marriage, a gentleman known as Lord Omery remarked, ‘Of her person and character people speak variously, but all agree that both are very bad.’

But at least, according to one account, she remained good to her family.

A wife being sold by her husband.

A man called Mr. Thicknesse recalled meeting Her Grace’s sister in a market place where the pretty young woman was selling groceries.

When he asked her about her relationship with her ducal sister the woman confirmed it was true, telling him that her sister still took notice of them.

‘Though she had many sisters, her sister sent for them all up to London, when she would give them new clothes suitable to their stations, send a servant to show them the sights in town, besides make them a present of money and pay their coach fare back to the country,’ concluding with, ‘What else could she do for we are not fit to sit down to the Duke’s table.’

Anne and her duke had one daughter, Augusta Ann. They were married for almost fifteen years before the duchess died in 1759.

After her death, Henry himself praised his late duchess in the family Register, writing that she, ‘possessed of every good quality…every paper relative to household affairs was left in the most exact order for the use of her surviving lord with directions indexed where to go to each paper, which must have been a work of some months, and plainly showed she was not insensible of her approaching dissolution.’

The duke remarried eight years after Anne died. His third wife was the daughter of a baronet. The couple had no children.